Skip to main content

Four Days in Salt Lake City

Omer Ashmaig is a sophomore majoring in Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology. He is an Undergraduate Research Associate in the Gross Translational Biomedical Neuroengineering Lab and a Peer Mentor in the Research Partners Program.


I recently had the opportunity to attend a scientific conference, COSYNE, with my graduate student mentor, Mark Connolly, and another undergraduate from my lab, Syed Ali Zaidi.




COSYNE is a computational and systems neuroscience conference. I had the pleasure of being awarded a travel grant to attend the conference through the conference organization itself. The travel grant covered the cost of the conference itself, flights, hotels, food, transportation, and any other expenses directly related to the conference. The program also matched me with a post-doc who served as my mentor during the conference. I spent four days in Salt Lake City, where I was able to listen to many amazing talks and ground-breaking research from around the globe, interact with many interesting poster presentations, and grow my professional network.





After those four days, I then headed off to a ski resort to attend a series of workshops. The workshops were an informal setting of collegial discussion and debate where many important research questions and topics were discussed.




In the end, I learned about the various sub-fields and topics of computational neuroscience, how to interact with scientists from around the globe and ask questions about their research, and made life-long friends! It was an experience and opportunity that I would do all over again!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Pop-Up Books used to ease Child Patients' Anxiety

  Holly Cordray   is a senior majoring in Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology. She was awarded a Fall 2020 Independent Grant which she used to conduct research at Children's Healthcare Atlanta. My name is Holly Cordray, and I am a senior in the Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology Honors Program.  Collaborating with Dr. Kara Prickett, a pediatric ENT surgeon at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, I am currently running a 150-patient clinical trial of an interactive resource I developed for pediatric patient education: an educational pop-up book for children facing surgery.  I began this project in 2019 with the support of the SURE program and my mentor in the Art History department, Dr. Tasha Dobbin-Bennett.  I wanted to build a resource that would engage children in active learning through hands-on features like flaps, wheels, and pull-tabs, equipping patients with understanding and positive coping strategies as they prepare for surgery.  I am hoping this rea...

A Whole New World of Research

Monica Vemulapalli is a junior majoring in Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology. She was awarded a Spring 2019 Conference Grant which she used to attend the Experimental Biology Conference . When I found out that my first ever research conference was going to be in my hometown of Orlando, Florida, I was excited! I knew that having an unfamiliar event happen at a very familiar place would make me less anxious. However, the conference turned out to be less stressful and more interesting than I ever thought. I attended  Experimental Biology (EB)  and   presented  my very first research poster , a memory that I will definitely cherish forever.

Why Research Wednesday: Annette Prah

Annette Prah is a 4th year student studying Biology in the College of Arts and Sciences. Prah’s research is through the Moffitt Lab in the Department of Hematology and Medical Oncology, where she currently studies the genetics of acute myeloid leukemia. Her project includes using bioinformatics approaches to identify current and novel mutations, assess sensitivity and specificity of clinical testing, and categorize patients into risk groups based on their cytogenetic and mutational profiles. After completing the fall semester of her junior year, Prah reached out to the TA of her genetics course expressing interest in participating in genetics research. He put her in contact with an associate dean in the Office of Undergraduate Education, who gave her guidance while contacting faculty. Prah contacted Dr. Moffitt, whose prior research on hematological malignancies such as B and T cell lymphomas was intriguing to Prah. The two had a meeting to discuss Dr. Moffitt’s current research an...